


small potatoes

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Child Abuse, Depression, Foster Care, Gen, Introspection, Protective Matt, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Red, matt tries to figure out why he's always worried about peter basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 00:06:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14758859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: The road between ten and fifteen had been a slow descent into bad and then worse.(Matt had a hard time in foster-care. It affects the way he relates to Peter.)





	small potatoes

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends, references to depression, child abuse, and suicide in this one; please do what you need to to take care of yourselves. 
> 
> I thought I'd make this series humorous, but it didn't feel right. So other team red drabbles will be floating around my general works page/team red tag if you want something a little happier.

Thinking back on it, Matt was just a baby when his daddy died. He sent Spidey off and tried to remember what he was doing at fifteen years old. Half a lifetime ago.

It wasn’t a good memory.

There had been several foster families by that point. If a single person had known what he’d gone through in Stick’s training, Matt doubted they’d have even tried to place him with a family at all. They might have taken one look at his record and shoved him in a higher security institution, one whose locks weren’t decades old like St. Agnes’s. If they’d been really kind, they would have shot him in the head and put him in the dirt next to his daddy, but alas. The kindness of social workers never extended quite that far.

Be that as it were, the first placement was right after Stick and it was holy hell. Matt didn’t like to think too much about sitting in that house (was it a house? It felt like a prison). He tended to spiral if he dwelled on it too much. About as far as he could safely go in his head was remembering the two oldest boys who were there with him. They’d been kind, one of them had even ruffled his hair a few times. The third oldest. Well. Matt had to stop there.

The next placement had been six months later. Just on the cusp of thirteen years old, he’d been too much for those guys to handle. To this day, he wasn’t sure what he’d done that had set them off. He’d learned how to control the nightmares better by then, and the senses were locked down. He remembered getting good grades and being polite, painfully polite while he was there. In the back of his social worker’s car, he’d tucked up his knees and very nervously asked her if he’d done something wrong. She said no and her heart pounded like she was furious. She said that sometimes things just didn’t click for people.

He thought later that maybe those guys hadn’t been prepared for a kid with a disability, and honestly it was a good thing that that was what had put them off first because they had _no_ idea. If they’d had to deal with Matt in full 13 year-old glory, replete with screaming night terrors and depression, well, he didn’t know what they would have done.

That Matt, the depressed 13 year-old, went to a group home with six other kids with disabilities. It was a very busy home. He slept for most of that placement, though, so all he could remember was being hungry and bone-deep exhausted. One of the kids there was diagnosed with emotional disturbance and he and Matt shared a wall. He kept Matt up, even through depression sleep. When Cindy, his social worker, came to pay him a visit after he’d been there for a month and a half, her heart went fast and then dropped steady. Matt had known then that he was going back home (at some point St. Agnes’s had become home and to this day it remained such), and sure enough, the next morning he was sitting in the back of Cindy’s sedan, knees up and head leaned against the window, trying to sleep.

Cindy made him do some counseling after that. It was different from the grief counseling he’d gotten before and he hated it.

At fourteen, Matt went to live with a very religious family who were stoked to be getting a kid from an honest to god Catholic orphanage. He was their first foster-kid. His care team was violently opposed to this, but the lady of the home was a psychologist and the dad was an optician, and they were determined that their combined skills would meet all Matt’s needs.

He climbed out the window to his room at that house eight times and made it back to Hell’s Kitchen five of them.

The sixth time he got out the window, he ran straight to St. Agnes’s and found Sister Molly and cried for an hour. She took him to Mass and it made him feel more whole than he had in months.

Sister Molly asked when the last time he’d been to church was and he’d known then that if he played his cards right, he wouldn’t have to go back to that place. He didn’t even have to lie. He told her that the dad didn’t let Matt go to Mass, he had to go with him and the Mom and Olivia and Brady to the church where Dad was pastor. They’d found his rosary once and it had turned into a Situation.

That Dad and that Mom wouldn’t sign off on Matt doing any after school programs, either. No sports, no boxing, no gym. They said they were ‘concerned about his safety,’ which Matt translated as ‘you’re blind and therefore incompetent.’ They thought that Matt was rude to wear his noise canceling headphones around the house. They didn’t like that he didn’t want to wear the clothes they’d bought him. They didn’t like that he had a picture of him and his dad, which traveled from home to home with him, even though he couldn’t see it.

The eighth time he climbed out his window and the fifth time he made it back to Hell’s Kitchen, the mother superior allowed the nuns to call his new social worker. They argued that it was a case of religious discrimination.

Matt went back to get his things with the social worker and refused to speak one word to either parent. He heard that Mom calling him ungrateful after the door closed and he almost turned back to slam into it, just to scare the shit out of her. Ungrateful. Ungrateful to be told that his God wasn’t good enough, that his dad wasn’t good enough.

Fifteen, Peter’s age, was the last time Matt had a foster family. Peter was such a sweet kid. At fifteen, Matt had been angry.

Fifteen was the year that something in Matt’s head tripped and told him that the shit he was going through was fucking unfair. It was the year when the memories of what that third brother did in that first house clicked into place. It was the year when he realized that it was not a privilege to be constantly assessing each person he encountered for ten possible weaknesses and no less than three ways to kill them. Fifteen was the year that he realized that he didn’t want a fucking foster family, he wanted his dad, but all that he had left of him was a voice in his head and the phantom cold slickness of his dead face under his fingers.

The road between ten and fifteen had been a slow descent into bad and then worse.

So, Matt at fifteen had kind of wanted to die. A lot.

The depression sleep was punctuated by listlessness, then rage, then sobs, then white noise and the whole thing over again. He didn’t want to eat. Keeping his head up in school was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but then again, so was putting on shoes in the morning. And so was stepping into the shower.

Social Services couldn’t decide if a family or a group home was a better fit for his needs at the time, but they’d gone with a family so that he’d get more attention.

The last thing he wanted was attention.

That Mom and that Dad and that Katie and Kayla had been good people. He tried to be as polite and convenient as possible for those guys. But the problem was that that Mom and that Dad had genuinely wanted to become _his_ mom and dad, and the thought of replacing his dad sent him into panic attacks. Telling a couple who wanted to adopt him that the thought of adoption, affection, and sincere investment in him was the reason he was hyperventilating in the closet was absolutely unthinkable.

Katie asked him if he didn’t like her parents one day. She said she’d understand if he didn’t think of her like a big sister.

He told her quietly that it wasn’t like that, it was just that he really missed his dad.

He heard Katie tell that to that Mom and Dad, and it sent him spiraling. The night terrors showed up again. The exhaustion increased threefold. He couldn’t get out of bed, he woke himself up calling for his dad.

It must have been really hard on the family trying so hard to accept him for who he was.

He woke up one night after sleeping for two days and shoved everything he owned in the duffle he’d come with. He cleaned the entire room, washed all of the linen, put everything back as he’d found it. It took about three hours. At 4am, he picked up his bag and left.

He got to St. Michael’s at around 6. It took longer because he had to walk a lot of the way. He joined morning prayer and fell asleep in a pew. The police woke him up and took him to the station. He’d had something of a history of showing up there uncalled for.

The Mom and Dad were devastated and for the first time in his life, he got to tell someone that it wasn’t their fault he was miserable. He liked them fine, they were amazing people. They’d given him everything he could have wanted. Well. Almost.

“My dad is dead,” he said simply, too exhausted to track the tone, “And I don’t want any other mom or dad but him. No one understands but him. No one can ever care like he does.”

The dam broke and the sobs hit him like a freight train, shocking the apathy away.

“I just want my dad,” he hiccupped. “I just want to be with Dad again.”

That Mom and Dad hugged him and told him that it was okay. The proximity was terrifying. They said if he ever wanted to try again, he was welcome back in their home. He thanked them. They left.

One day, shortly after he’d returned to St. Agnes, he told the new father at church that he wanted to be with Dad again, and the father told him that to take any life, including his own, was a sin.

Then he told Matt that he’d always had two fathers.

Matt quickly learned that he had three. Father Lantom ruffled his hair once or twice and told him that when he was older, they’d have coffee and chat. He made sure to visit Father Lantom at least twice a week.

When he got into college, the letter came to the orphanage. He read it to the nuns and they tittered with delight. He read it to Father Lantom, who put a firm hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He read it to his dad’s grave and only cried a little. Dad listened, though, he always did.

Peter was sweet at fifteen in a way which made Matt think of him as younger. It made him want to herd the kid, to shove him behind him at the slightest sign of danger. Protecting Peter was like protecting ten-year-old Matty the day he stepped into the ring with Stick for the first time, just weeks before his eleventh birthday.

Peter didn’t have to understand.

 


End file.
